"My whole philosophy," says Arthur Imperatore, "is that we build men. Incidentally, we move freight." By practicing what he preaches, he's driven A-P-A Transport to the top of a tough industry.
Put yourself in my place for a minute. You're in a Holiday Inn in North Bergen, N.J., on a Saturday in January, and wondering why. It seemed like a good idea; you've never written about a trucking company. But now you've got your doubts. It's 7 a.m., the coffee shop's not even open yet and there's an ice storm going on outside. Still, you drive the three miles to the corporate headquarters of A-P-A Transport Corp. to interview its president, Arthur E. Imperatore.
A guard meets you just inside the front gate and says "Mr. Arthur" is expecting you. You're in the middle of a couple of acres of blacktop, surrounded by loading docks and long lines of trucks parked with military precision. Already you're trying to get your bearings. Where are the usual piles of discarded tires, the overturned oil drums, the burnt-out crankshafts? There's not even a gum wrapper lying around. The guard drives you over to the executive offices, dark and empty on the weekend. He takes you to the second floor and points you to an unusually wide black door edged in gold. "Mr. Arthur's office," he says, and leaves. You're about to become totally disoriented. That door's the first clue that you've arrived at an extraordinary place -- something more than a trucking company.
You knock. No answer. You open the door slowly and step inside. Even if you had seen a picture of it before, you still wouldn't be prepared. Mr. Arthur's office is nothing less than the drawing room of a 17th-century Venetian prince.
At the furthest end of this long rectangular room is a black marble fireplace with floor-to-ceiling-length mirrors on either side. The mirrors throw back the gleam of the oak parquet floor and the early morning light from the long windows to each side. In the middle of the room, on a Persian rug, stands an ornate conference table covered with green leather embossed with gold. The walls and ceiling are painted in light greens and beige and the woodwork is trimmed in gold. Off to one side is a plant-filled attrium with the statute of a contemplative Grecian nude perched on a pedestal in the middle of a fountain surrounded by statutes of three nymphs playing flutes. You sit down and gawk, which turns out to be a good idea because this is only the beginning. Everything about this company is extraordinary.
Depending on what you read or whom you talk to, A-P-A is either the most profitable, the most productive, or the most astonishing trucking company ever to come down the pike. Or it's all of the above.
Ron Roth, director of research and statistical services at the American Trucking Associations Inc., after comparing A-P-A's superiority in net profitability, return on equity, and return on capital with an average of 409 intercity general freight common carriers in 1980, said, "As far as I know, there are very few companies that come even remotely close to A-P-A."
In Commercial Car Journal' s 1980 compilation of the 100 largest for-hire motor carriers in the United States, as determined by their gross operating revenues, A-P-A, at $62.9 million, ranked only 85th. But -- and this "but" should be underlined -- it had the best operating ratio of any company on the list.
To industry analysts, the operating ratio -- operating expenses divided by revenues -- is a basic and critical measure of a company's profitability and productivity. Said Commercial Car Journal: "Operating with Teamster labor in what is probably the highest cost area of the country, metropolitan New York-New Jersey, A-P-A president Arthur E. Imperatore continues to astound industry experts by getting the kind of productivity from the union that no one else in trucking is capable of doing." What's more, A-P-A has been number one for the past five years.
There are voices outside the black door. Arthur comes in. He's telling a man in charge of buildings and maintenance that the "Season's Greetings" sign outside has been up too long. He says this oversight could ruin the "symmetry and harmony of the workplace." What? Yes, he continues, workers' attitudes and habits reflect their environment. Given the right environment, workers move with a certain rhythmic harmony, even beauty.
Arthur's standing at a window demonstrating his point by analyzing the work of three men and a pickup truck with a plow attached, scratching away at the pack ice below. But one man has moved a stop sign out of the way of the plow and has left it turned so that it can't be seen by approaching traffic. Suddenly, Arthur is rapping at the window with a quarter and swinging his arms in widd circles and shouting: "No, no turn it around!" The sentences that follow are short and blunt, powered by four-letter words. The man understands. "We contracted the job out to them," Arthur says. "You can tell they're not A-P-A people. I won't tolerate a half-assed job."
He won't tolerate half-assed jobs, nor loafers or loungers either, because he can't. He appears to be answering some personal and irresistible genetic signal. "I've been working since I was 10 years old," he says. "My first job was on a truck.I worked all day for 50? and a baloney sandwich and a soda. I've always wanted to do my job and do it right. I don't know where it comes from, but I've always been that way." He believes that any man who fails to commit himself totally to his work has failed to commit himself totally to his own life. Each time, it's a small tragedy not because he's let the company down, but rather that he's chosen to be something less than he could be. Arthur won't let it happen. "My whole philosophy here," he says, "is that we build men -- incidentally, we move freight."
By 1946, Arthur's beliefs had already become his mission. He was a zealot and his own family was the first to hear the word. After serving in World War II, Arthur and four of his brothers came home of the five-room wood-frame house in West New York, N.J. "I was so anxious to get started on my life," Arthur says, "I couldn't contain myself." At first he decided he needed a college education and began attending night school. During the day, he was a Fuller Brush salesman. Meanwhile, two of his brothers, Eugene and Arnold, had bought a used Army ordinance truck for $700 and were driving around town with "Imperatore Bros. Moving and Trucking" painted on the side of the truck. "But most of the time," Arthur says, "they were just hanging around the house. I couldn't stand it. One day, I told them to get out and sell, or take my name off the truck."
